


Gather Ye Children Of Men

by captainkilly



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, Christmas, F/M, Gen, Graphic Description, Grief/Mourning, Minor Character Death, this is not a happy fic, with apologies to the turkey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 05:53:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8956987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainkilly/pseuds/captainkilly
Summary: Frank Castle's not the only one who deals with loss. He knows this as surely as the seasons change and pass by around him. He reconfigures his new normal with every step he takes.
Sometimes, he meets someone else in the spaces his grief leaves him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The vibe of this was heavily inspired by Jamie N Commons's _The Preacher_. It wound up taking a pretty dark and unexpected turn midway through, which I hope to have given adequate voice to.

His blood sings and thrums inside his body with the steady pace of war. He opens his eyes to the sound of sirens shaking the city's underbelly awake. The night air that settles around him leaves its traces in dancing specks of dust. The room has not been lived in for a long time. Even now that he's here, he is more a ghost to it than a man.

There is ice underneath his feet. The chill of it pierces the soles of his feet where the skin is still soft. It's how he knows he still feels. How he knows he's still alive. He huffs out a breath and is surprised it doesn't vanish in a puff of smoke. The room certainly feels cold enough to warrant such visibility.

Nothing about this feels right.

He thinks of taking the bed next time, though it's not his and all the sheets turn damp in this space. Dismisses the thought the next second. His hand trembles with the remnants of fear. If he goes to bed, he'll wake to a kiss on his brow and the sound of children's laughter in the next room. If he falls asleep in the spaces he was once used to, he'll wake to strands of gold hair tickling his nose and the pitter-patter of small feet dancing around the room. If he falls prey to his weakness and rests his head, he'll see them again.

He fears the night more than anything. His mind plays tricks on him in shifting shadows and noises whose origins he can no longer identify. He spends the nights awake and angry. The white-hot rage sears his mind until sleep is no longer an option and nothing in the night reminds him of what he's lost. His hand ceases its grief-stricken tremble. He curls it into a fist. Anything to stop the feeling of her interlocking her fingers with his own from beyond the grave.

He was never meant to survive this.

*****

The passing year sneaks up on him when he is too tired to stop himself from recognising that it's April. There is still a crisp cold to the early morning, which he is almost ridiculously grateful for. It's nothing like last year's radiant sunshine. Anything that is _not_ like last year is what gets him through the month. Or so he hopes, in the moments when he knows grief is about to catch up with him and swallow him whole.

He's having one of those moments right now.

He's staring at the goddamn carrousel and wonders when exactly his life went to hell. Seems like he's not the only one wondering this at five in the morning, however, if the calm presence on the bench in front of him is anything to go by. He walks up to her after a moment's hesitation.

She wordlessly hands him coffee the second he seats himself next to her. She doesn't speak. Doesn't even turn her head to look at him. All there is between them is the oversized cup he now holds in his hands. The warmth of it seeps through his fingers. He's never been more grateful to be dead. Death is what ensures that it's just him and her on this bench at this hour of the morning. The rest of the world is no longer watching his story now that he's gone.

He looks over at her for a moment. He's stupidly grateful to find that her piercing blue eyes are studiously avoiding him. Her gaze is fixed on the carrousel. Her fingers are curled around her own coffee cup in a pose that only looks relaxed at first glance. There's a tightness in her shoulders and in her jaw that he knows he's at least partially to blame for.

He opens his mouth to say something. _Anything._ His mind freezes at the thought. The sounds he makes instead are that of an animal left alone to die. He doesn't know what to say. Doesn't know how to form any words at all. Not when the soft light breaks through the trees and sets the carrousel ablaze. _This_ is how it looked last year. It's all it takes for him to avert his gaze.

He regrets coming here.

Her fingers unfold from her cup moments later. There is a minuscule tremble to her fingers he cannot help but catch before her hand comes to rest on his knee. His muscles tense up underneath her hesitance, desperate to get away from her before he remembers the full extent of loss. Her head turns toward him too quick for him to look away.

"I know," is all she says to him.

Her eyes are softer than he remembers them being. The blue hasn't lost its fierceness entirely, but there is something warm hiding in its shades. She's been around him long enough to catch the moments when the words won't come out right or don't come out at all. She knows more about what's happening in his brain than he does, which should be a terrifying concept except for when it's just her hand reaching out for him at the times when he feels like he's never going to have a home to go back to.

The ground is still threatening to swallow him whole. It beckons to him with the demand to come lie down on it and be still. To have his death be real instead of this fake mockery with which he's been playing charades. This is the ground on which he should have died. A bullet in his head. An order to not resuscitate him. His heart is heavy and his mind in disarray. Yet, he lives.

"Do you want me to go?" she asks, then, and her voice trembles treacherously on the last word.

His deliberation almost takes too long. The weight of her hand already lifts off his knee. He struggles to give shape to words. Gives up in the next second and reaches for her hand instead. Their fingers touch in mid-air. He huffs out an impatient breath now that his hand clenches reflexively around hers. Her hand relaxes ever so slightly in response. He tries to give shape to the jumble of thoughts that now run together in his mind.

"Stay."

It's the only word he manages to speak. The rest of them don't come, though he wants to talk with Karen more than he wants to stare at that stupid carrousel. Her hand barely weighs anything in his own, but somehow it feels like he's holding a part of the world again. They touch the bench's surface with clenched hands simultaneously, learning to fit in the small space between them, and he almost finds the words with which to say it's been a year since the war began.

She begins to speak, softly though clearly, about always wanting to sit on the highest horse in the entire carrousel back when she was still a little girl. She stumbles on the name of her brother when she laughs about how he always picked the safest spot in comparison and then spent half the ride trying to coax her away from her horse. He nods at her words and scrapes his throat to blink away the tears that threaten to spill forth from his eyes. She speaks the names of his children with the same care she gives her brother's name shortly after he attempts to get rid of the grief that has lodged itself in his chest.

There is loss in every word she says to him, but it's not _his_ loss that she touches by speaking about the past. He frowns and tightens his grip on her hand when she speaks about a car crash, about a family split and torn apart in the wake of grief, about something so terrible that she fled to New York just to escape its chokehold. He understands she's speaking about her loss so that he does not have to find the words for his today. She talks and talks and talks until her voice grows hoarse and her tears dry on her cheeks. Her long blonde hair brushes his shoulder as she leans closer and tells him she's alone in this world and so very tired of death.

He dares not say to her he's tired of life spent alone. Instead, he fixes his gaze on the tallest horse in the carrousel. Measures his words.

"I'm here," he says to her, and this time he means it. This time is not like other times that were between them before. "You're not alone."

This time, it's her hand that tightens around his own.

*****

The days are slowly turning into the golden red light of summer's promise. The air is hot and heavy around him. The warmth is visible in the sweat and rose-coloured cheeks of the people that pass him by on the street. He smiles when Hell's Kitchen's natural gruffness turns to irritability and finally transforms into an uneasy joy. This part of the city is hesitant to celebrate the brighter days.

He sits on a rooftop and forgets where he is in the next breath. Forgets _when_ he is, but never _who_ he is. Identity's the only stronghold of the soldier. He remembers his name. He knows his birthday. The New York accent lingers in the low rumble of his voice. His battles linger in the bruises on his knuckles.

They say he never left war behind. That it's a constant in the ruin that's his brain, tugging and pulling down all the good memories into the haze of life or death. They say that's the reason why he struggles to grasp at words sometimes, why he can't settle his fingers into something that doesn't beat the steady pace of gunfire, why everything he does ends in blood and the howl of sirens in the dead of night. They say that he never came home from war.

The taste of _kanafeh_ lingers on his lips. Grains of sand scrape his tongue, his throat, his lungs. There is dust in his nostrils. Dust in the inner corner of his eye, making him blink against the strain of the light. There is peace in the hot stream of the sun's relentlessness. He hears the call to prayer of a nearby mosque weave its way through the city's streets and alleys. His mouth forms the words without thinking, using it as a passage of time, though he refuses to pray to any one god these days. He is no longer able to present himself in supplication.

This is how he knows he's no longer in a warzone. Every day during his deployment was spent in prayer. The big ones in the morning and evening: please let me stay alive one more day; thank you for keeping me alive today. The smaller ones and the plain crazy ones in all the hours spent awake, too, though he maintains to this day that praying for an endless supply of batteries is just common sense. He's prayed his way through unclear instructions, bayonet-carrying commanders, bomb-riddled fields, ambushes, and the world's worst food packages. He lived. Survived somehow.

Then, he came home. Prayers changed and shifted to dinnertable gratitude and a safeguard for a child's sleep. An old routine ready for him to pick up at a moment's notice. He lay next to his wife that night and whispered the quietest prayer in the world: thank you, thank you, _thank you_.

Frank Castle now knows that showing gratitude to some almighty force is something to never ever do again. It's essentially a way of saying his life is good right now. That he's grateful to be alive and with his family. Life isn't about the good moments. Life isn't about simply breathing in the scents of home and family. Life's meant to hurt. Life's meant to tear _everything_ away from you.

He stopped praying the second he woke up in hospital.

Some might say he formed new prayers and whispered them to life in bullets. He doesn't think that's the truth. His life was forever altered with those, as he now changes the lives of others with them. He's seen their damage up close. Something that coated his wife's long blonde hair with blood is not a prayer. Something that made his son fall down and never get up is not a prayer. Something that erased his daughter's face is not a prayer.

He is a cursed man. He may have forgotten how to pray and mean every word of it, but he knows how to spread that curse beyond himself. His whispers in the dead of night are the same as the words that weave themselves around his bullets. He knows this weaponry is enough to change the world. Knows that it has the potential to topple kingdoms and raze the law of the land.

Men like him aren't meant to live.

He stands on the rooftop and lets the sands of his past blend with the searing heat of the present.

*****

All of his memories run together in his head. He's so certain he's been here before. His name is in the news again. His actions are splayed out on the front of newspapers he passes by on the street. Some are suggesting he's taken up the Devil's mantle, though he's certain that the Devil of Hell's Kitchen would still disapprove of murder if he were in the city to witness his ascent to the media's pages once more. Others see the blood he coats his hands with and suggest that he should be brought to justice.

With justice, they really mean 'march him to a scaffold and string him up high'. A part of him still scoffs at that hypocrisy the way she also did when he spoke with her last. There are things he doesn't tell Karen. He thinks she can guess most of them, if the look in her eyes when she listens to him is anything to go by, but it's not her burden to carry even if she is hellbent on causing trouble.

Her most recent penchant for trouble is why he's in the news at all. He draws his coat more tightly around him as he passes people on the street. Better to not let people get a good look at him now that he was seen dragging Bullseye's carcass onto the steps of the DA's office in the early hours of the morning. The man's targets were clear: all enhanced humans and whoever provides them with aid. Frank may not be enhanced, but he knows government legislation bullshit when he sees it. He also knows a threat when it aims itself at Karen Page's blonde head.

Leaves crunch under his feet as he walks into the park. He avoids the carrousel this time around, knowing it's most likely to be under closer scrutiny now that he's not so dead after all. He can't keep the days straight in his mind. He hasn't seen his family for over a year. He's forgotten how many deaths happened in their name. Funny. He should remember how many counts of murder he was on trial for. How many he got himself convicted for.

There are only three deaths he feels responsible for, even when the world tells him he shouldn't. He didn't wish to add a fourth to it, or so he said to her when she fixed him with that challenging stare he could never refuse. She had sat there in silence for what felt to him like the wrong side of forever. Finally, there came a short nod and a sharp intake of breath that might as well have been an "amen" to a prayer he is so sure he never created in her presence.

He stands still on the path he chose for a second. The cold wind pinches the skin of his cheeks. Red and yellow and green weave their magic into the trees that surround him. If he was a more sentimental man, he'd drop to his knees in gratitude at something marking the passage of time in his life. Pale light streams out before him and he sees the city rise up around the edges of autumn's sprawl.

It's then that he decides to leave, though it takes him several days beyond this moment to follow through on the decision. He doesn't know where he will go. Decides he doesn't really care.

Enough is enough.

*****

He meets her outside the church, as if that's how it was always meant to be. He doesn't know why he came to Fagan Corners in Vermont if all he wanted was to escape from his life. He doesn't know why she's here. She hasn't been back here since she first moved to New York.

The snow crunches under her boots as she walks up to him. Her face looks wan and drawn here, as though being back home puts a toll on her spirit. Her slender hand fits neatly in the crook of his arm. She doesn't say a word to him. Simply puts her hand on him and guides him away from the gate.

When they finally halt, they are in the far corner of the graveyard. She bends down to brush the snow off the lettering on a tombstone. Hears her choke out a strangled sob when her fingers touch the word beloved. He only hesitates a brief moment before putting his hand on her back. His fingers tangle slightly in her hair, but she doesn't seem to mind. He sees Kevin Page's name reflected up at them.

"I'm sorry," he tells her, because there's not a lot more left to say except that.

"I shouldn't have come," she replies. Her voice only wobbles slightly, which is a feat he admires given the gravity of what lies before them. "There's nothing for me here. Nothing except death."

He hums a soft assent to that. It's how he feels about New York. Being away from it is like missing a limb that used to hurt all the time and now that it is gone you wonder where all that hurt went. There are some places that just hurt more than others. He watches her shake her head and brush stray tears off her cheek. Her eyes are brightest blue as she turns her head toward him. She reminds him of the sky more than he can say.

It's not clear to him how long they stand there and simply look at each other. Any awkwardness that once lingered between them evaporated over the course of the past year. He remembers her being jumpier and far more anxious than this. A smile tugs at his lips when he realises that she's used to him looking far more beat-up and angry. Time has given him some kindness after all.

"I'll get out of your hair," he finally says. A minuscule frown creases her brow in response. "Give you some space with your family."

He is already retreating from her brother's grave when her voice floats over to him. "Don't go too far, Frank."

It almost sounds like a ' _stay_ '.

*****

He decides to go spend time in the next town over. Fagan Corners feels like Karen wherever he goes, so staying here doesn't match his promise to give her some modicum of space. He's close enough like this without being there with her.

The town's winding streets are dusted with the same sprinkles of snow that cover the trees and rooftops. The previously clear sky has darkened to a blue-black hue and is currently threatening to steal all the lights away. The headlights of his car cut through it as sharply as a knife. He passes by a "come again soon!"-sign that marks the hopeful nature of a town not used to being forgotten.

All plans of giving Karen space evaporate before his eyes when the next turn in the road leaves him driving past her car, of which the door is slightly ajar. He's not very proud of the way he manages to slam on the brakes of his own car and coax a screeching noise out of them, but he comes to a slightly skidding halt on the side of the road before he even realises what he's doing.

He's out of the car in no time. The road is dimly lit, but he can make out a rather large house on top of a small hill not far from where her car stands. He remembers having seen it before. In some picture, some drawing, something like that. He frowns as he double-checks the gun he always carries on him. He's never been here in his lifetime, so that leaves only one possibility he's not sure he likes.

This might be the home of Karen's family.

The keys are gone from her car's ignition. It's the one thing that almost makes him turn back to his own car and move on. If she was really in trouble, his treacherous mind supplies, she wouldn't have had the time to pull her keys out of the ignition. But then, _then_ there's her open purse on the passenger's seat and he's leaning over to peer into it before his brain even catches up with him. Her gun and wallet rest comfortably against a folder filled with papers.

He tugs the folder loose. Opens it on the driver's seat. Takes a quick look at its contents before leaning against the doorpost and offering a whispered curse to whatever god is unfortunate enough to still be listening to the Punisher's words. His fingers twitch in their old staccato rhythm. He closes the folder. Clicks the car door shut moments later.

The gateway leading up to the house has been left ajar enough for him to slip through without issue. He frowns when he sees the marks that shoes have left in the dirt next to the cobblestones that make up the path to the house. It's too unclear in this dark to tell what they're about exactly, but he's quite certain that he spots heeled shoe marks slipping into slides and skids all along the path. It's as if she was partially dragged toward the house, but conscious enough to put up a fight.

He pauses before he walks up the front steps that lead to the door. The door's wide open. Soft light streams forth from the hall beyond it, welcoming and inviting in one moment before the ominous nature of the situation truly hits him. The further up the steps he goes, the more it becomes clear that this is _not_ a happy family reunion. His gun makes its way into his hand before he knows good and well what he's looking at.

One of her shoes teeters on the threshold. The other is strewn half a foot away, next to a knocked-over lampshade and a shattered vase. Water has spilled out onto the rather expensive-looking rug. Flowers lie scattered across the hallway, stems broken from being trampled by feet. The mirror on the left hangs slightly askew, though it survived whatever onslaught occurred here.

The door at the far end of the hallway is open, but not enough for him to be able to tell what lies beyond it. He ignores the staircase for the moment. Takes great care to not step on any shards or anything else that can give his location or presence away. With another deep breath, he's back in his familiarity from training. He approaches the door slowly and methodically. Pushes it slightly more ajar. Peers through the opening his actions leave him with.

Curses out loud in the next second.

He's through the door in the blink of an eye and kneeling next to the man lying in the centre of the kitchen floor. Checks for a pulse, even though the knife is stuck so deeply in the side of his neck that only its handle protrudes from it. The pool of blood surrounding the man is too telling to ignore. Frank knows there'd be no hope of saving this life, not even if there was a pulse to go on. He knows this, and yet he despairs at it.

The rest of the kitchen looks like a warzone. Knives are strewn over the counter, having dropped out of their holder, and some of the glasses have shattered and scattered over the floor haphazardly. There is blood on the counter, blood on the tiles, blood up against the kitchen cabinets.

He breathes out the breath he'd been holding. Reassesses the situation. Wills himself to be as quiet as possible. He has no idea what he walked into. Isn't sure if the dead man in front of him is victim or aggressor. He knows him to be Karen's father. _Paxton Page_ , his mind supplies helpfully. Brilliant, religious, grieving.

He shakes his head as if to clear it. This is not his future.

A low, keening noise to his left makes him grip his gun tighter. For a moment, he swears it's a distressed animal and he almost dares not look. Humans are one thing. Animals another, and their suffering is always undeserved. Once he looks, however, he registers the noise for what it is.

"Ma'am?" he rasps out as his fingers leave the man's still body and he turns toward the direction of the noise. His eyes meet a door and a staircase that look like they lead to the basement. "That you?"

He treads over to the top of the staircase softly. The sight that greets him is one that makes him swear out loud once more before he thunders down the stairs. He sees enough of the woman's body lying contorted in unnatural angles to know that she is dead as well, although her face is mostly obscured by the long blonde hair of the woman leaning over her.

He pauses on the bottom step. There is blood underneath the woman's head. Her arms are full of red scratches. Bruises mar her wrists. His hand grips the stair's railing tightly at the sight. He tucks his gun back into his waistband when the sound of choked sobs reaches his ears. There is a certainty in him that he is not going to need it anymore. That whatever happened here is already past.

She doesn't even appear to have really heard him, though she has rocked backward slightly at his approach. Her hands are clenched tightly around the frame of the older woman. She's barefoot. Her coat is torn and dirty. Her dress underneath it looks even worse for wear, as its hem is tattered and frayed and he is quite sure that its neckline sat a lot higher than it does now. Silently, he comes to the realisation that the state of her clothing is the least of his concerns right now. There is something _worse_ in her voice when she speaks, something terrible and lost in the pitch of it.

He knows that pitch, because it was in his voice when he lost his family. He knows that pitch, because his voice had sounded like that of a stranger. He knows that pitch, because he thought of himself as a wounded animal when he heard it. He can't shake the sound. Hearing it again brings forth the push of memories that he wills into the background desperately. Meat spilling out of the place where his daughter's face used to be. His wife's scream cut short as Junior pitches and lurches forward. His hands clenching around too-white too-pristine hospital bedsheets.

"Mommy, mommy? Mom? Please, mommy, _please_.."

He drops down beside her rather unceremoniously upon hearing the pleading, desperate note amid the keening wail. His movements slow to a gentle crawl as his hands reach for her blood-soaked own. Dimly, he is aware of hushing her with nonsensical noises until her fingers relinquish the tight hold she has on her mother's body. Her hands curl into his own. There is a tremor in her fingers that makes him clasp them that much more tightly.

The look in her eyes as she finally turns her head toward him almost knocks him off his feet. There is desolation in the pale blue where the light strikes them. A forlorn, deeper loss in the darker blue hiding in the shadows of her gaze. Tears have coursed across her cheeks in a steady stream. Her make-up has run out entirely. He extracts one of his hands to brush the worst of the black off her cheeks as gently as he can muster.

"He _pushed_ her," she chokes out then, and he reassesses everything he knows. There's a rasp in her throat he recognises, one that will soon become hoarse with use, and he rests his hand on her cheek because of it. "She tried to help me and he p-pushed her. Who does that? What kind of man..?" She shakes her head. Her voice is tinged with wonder and incredulity. "I-I couldn't let him get away with it. C-couldn't stop myself."

He waits her out, then, though he knows what she is about to say before she says it. Knows that this doesn't get easier to hear someone else say it, so he holds his tongue and lets her be. There's a defiant tilt to her head he knows as _not-her-first-rodeo_. The look in her eyes shifts and alters into something colder than the snow and ice of Vermont.

"I felt the knife when I reached behind me." Her words come out fast, breathless even. "He had just rounded on me again after.. after he made mom fall. I heard her body hit the stairs. He said it was my fault before.. before I stuck the knife in his neck." His hand moves to tuck her hair behind her ear and lingers on the back of her head very gingerly. "Like _everything_ that's always happened is somehow my fault. He thought that I'd come back to help him complete his work. Instead, I messed it up again like I always mess things up. If I'd just come quietly. I-if I hadn't fought like hell to get back to my car. If I had just come back and let Kevin come back so _they_ could be a family again.."

His voice is soft, even when his mind is screaming louder than it has in months. "Kevin is dead, ma'am," he says. "He can't come back." He knows death to be that kind of permanent.

"I know that. I know! But he thought he could cheat death. Dad thought he could.." Her eyes are wild, her voice is strong, and she's connecting the dots from her papers to her tragedy right in front of him. "He thought he could bring Kevin back. He's been experimenting with cobalt and other things. Refusing the military access to his material." He nods at her to show he's read that much in the file she kept. "He thought the last component was something.. I don't know.. something metaphysical. Who better to be the last component than me? H-he thought that sacrificing me would bring Kevin back."

"With all due respect, ma'am," he rasps out then, "your father managed to cook up the biggest amount of bullshit I've ever heard." He shakes his head. Imagines, just for a second, sacrificing Lisa to bring Junior back to life. His mind balks at the thought. "The dead are dead and stay dead. I know that much."

"I know it too," she whispers, then, and her gaze drops to her mother's body. "It was always meant to be me. Kevin had borrowed my car. Dad didn't know. H-he thought it was _me_ driving that night." Her voice becomes a whisper of horrors he didn't know any family could possess. "It should have been _me_ in that crash. Dad's experiments required the firstborn. Bluest cobalt for the colour of my eyes.. I should have died."

He wants to tell her how glad he is that she didn't. Wants to share with her how grateful he is to have her be among the living. The words don't come and his brain betrays him by creating a jumble of grief where his words used to be. Instead, he pulls her against him wordlessly. Quietly, gently, softly. He cradles her head against his chest for what feels like hours spun into mere seconds. Her hand folds into the creases of his jacket. A tremor runs through her body and he knows it to be her nightmare come to life.

He folds himself around her grief much in the way she shaped herself around his. He'd thought her to be slightly touched in the head for choosing to speak with him, for actually listening to what he had to say at all. She'd been to his house. Tried to get to know his family and all his reasons why. Talked back to him during the endless preparations for his trial. Smiled at him like he wasn't a dead man walking, like he still mattered. Fought for his story even after hell had landed on her doorstep. Maybe even because of it.

Tonight, he sits with Karen Page in her house and watches over her as she says goodbye.

*****

It's strange to him how methodical death's aftermath has begun to feel. He usually leaves bodies where they first fall. Knows enough about covering his tracks by now, though, since he uprooted Schoonover and all the rest. This is the first time he's been gentle about it.

Her father kept an underground laboratory. Many of his notes are utter gibberish to both him and Karen, despite their combined intelligence combing through them quickly. They know enough about his research to let it burn. Storage units for chemicals line the walls of the basement. The cobalt Karen spoke of is only on-site in trace quantities. Not enough to turn the area entirely radioactive. Certainly not enough for whatever experiment the man had planned. He knows he should care about where the rest of the cobalt is stored, but she's looking at him like she's about to lose the last remnant of her strength and so he refrains from asking. (Something for another day, in future, when the smoke clears and her world has settled. He promises himself that much.)

He settles on making it appear like a freak accident that took their lives. Moves the father to the heart of the laboratory rather unceremoniously. She has told him to leave her mother exactly where her body came to rest. He dared not argue with the terrible steel in her voice. Instead, he leaves her to wash the blood off her hands as he goes to move his car off-road. He's quite sure law enforcement will have a field day once they realise said car's tied in with one of Wilson Fisk's eyes and ears outside jail.

It's the dead of night when he starts the fire. He makes it to Karen's car without issue before the fire really catches up with the house. She's curled up in the passenger seat. Her eyes are pale blue in the dim light as she blinks owlishly at him. He drives them away from the house. She never looks back.

It takes a while for him to realise that the radio's still softly jingling forth from the speakers. He moves to turn it off when the host announces it to be "a fine Christmas Eve indeed, ladies and gentlemen" and proceeds to play the most ridiculous rendition of _Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer_ he's ever heard in his life. She stills his hand's movement by clasping it firmly in her own.

"My dad hated most Christmas carols," she explains. "Kevin loved them. Mom used to sing them around the house." Her voice wobbles, but she doesn't relinquish the tight hold she has on him. "I don't mind hearing them."

He acquiesces with a nod. Lets the ride lapse back into silence, though he briefly squeezes her hand in comfort. He doesn't really know where he's driving to. They're the only ones out on the road. He thinks he's going further away from New York, but decides to reassess that in the morning. Maybe one day away from all they know isn't the worst decision he's ever made.

The radio's presence finally makes him snort with laughter once _Silent Night_ makes an appearance. His own memories play up, clear as day for just this once. "Junior--" he starts, unsure of if she wants to hear his thoughts. Decides to brave through it anyway. "He, uh.."

"What?" Her voice is lighter, now, and encouraging. "I can tell it's something funny.. We could use some of that."

"I don't know about funny, ma'am, but we always called this song The Turkey Song." His face splits into a grin when he says it, aware of how ridiculous it sounds to have such a solemn Christmas carol be named thusly. "Junior always thought that an 'infant' was some kind of turkey. He'd gotten the idea from the 'tender and mild' part that followed after." He laughs at the memory. "He was so dead serious about it, too. My wife told me not to spoil it for him, so for about two Christmases we pretended we were singing about a turkey."

Her laugh is soft, but genuine. He glances sideways and sees that her face has split into a smile. "Who finally spoiled it for him?" she asks. "Or did he figure it out on his own?"

"Lisa." He shakes his head. Taps his finger on the steering wheel. "Lisa finally figured out what an infant was and proceeded to tell him all about it. He was inconsolable." It'd been one hell of a drama, he remembers that much. Junior wailing at the top of his lungs. Lisa indignant and already rolling her eyes through it like a pro. "I got him a toy turkey that year. Big, fluffy, it even had that big-ass wattle hanging from its beak. Maria wasn't amused when I called it The Tasty Infant behind Junior's back."

The laughter that spills forth from her then is unrestrained and joyful. Her head tips back as she snorts out a really undignified giggle before gasping for breath. He studiously keeps his eyes on the road as the next giggle dissolves into a tearful affair that comes out in bursts and pauses. Stars twinkle overhead in the darkest sky he's seen in quite a while. He lets her cry herself out while he hums softly along with whichever carols land in her car's speakers.

They're halfway on what he finally discovered is the road to Montpelier when she finally falls asleep. He tucks her jacket tighter around her slender frame.

Tonight's the first night upon which he prays.


End file.
